The unsettling thing about Dave, besides the constant mute act, is the burning hatred for zombies that radiates through everything he does. You get used to a man not speaking faster than you could believe; within hours it’s an accepted fact and you make accommodations for it. It’s the rage that really creeps you out. Everything he does seems to be in preparation for destroying zombies. We eat to stay alive. Dave eats like a man fuels a chainsaw. We train to stay alive, so that when the time comes we don’t add to the population of Zombieville. Dave trains like a soldier caring for his weapon, so that when the time comes he can murder as many of them as possible.
Not kill. Murder. His methods contain too much passion to be called anything else. Peter, Duck, and Wood collect zombies with ropes and nets. Peter works at finding the best ways to kill a zombie, and to expose the creatures’ weaknesses through experiments held back at the mill. It’s time-consuming and dangerous, but they have learned a lot.
Dave smashes zombies with a weighted rod. He cave-mans every shuffler he sees until there is little more than a murky red stain on the ground. Wood swears he once saw Dave attack a group of eight zombies out in the open. No one does that, because it would be too easy for you to get surrounded. Once the horde circles you, you are as good as undead. “It’s like he wanted to die,” Wood told me. “But he was just smashing one deady after the next, making this barbaric howl the whole time. I stepped in and netted one to help. He killed seven and then did the one under my net. Right through the net! Smash! Smash! Smash! His coveralls were soaked in z-juice when we were all done. And I just looked at him, standing their covered in gore and holding than club of his. I was friggin’ happy that I wasn’t a zombie that day. He would have killed a hundred.”
Of all the time I have spent with the group so far, I can’t help but wonder about people’s lives before the outbreak. I wonder, what does someone lose that makes a man become like Dave? What happened to him?
Then there’s Molly and Sissy, the mother-daughter pair. Only Molly, who is the self-proclaimed “Molly Maid” of the mill, knows if Sissy was a big or little sister. “We don’t talk about who we used to be,” Molly had once said when I started asking about her history. “There’s no point. That life’s long gone. This is who we are now, and that’s that.”
Truth be told, I didn’t really care about where she lived or what she used to do. What I really wanted was anything that could gain me points with Sissy. Ever since I met her, Sissy has been at the forefront of my mind. Everything about her leaves me breathless. Fit, gorgeous, and perfectly sexy. I was hooked the moment we first met. She’s twenty-two. I’m eighteen. Not an impossible span when 95% of the world is doing the rigor mortis shuffle. Not a lot of living competition, if you know what I mean. And I’d like to think that it’s not just me seeking time with her. She comes to find me several times a day, asking what I’m up to and wanting to train with me. Her mother forbids her from hunting with the boys. When the topic comes up, they share a look and an unspoken memory, and Sissy changes the topic. Molly wants her girl to be able to protect herself, but she will not allow her living daughter to go out of her way to find danger.
“The whole world is one big carnival of terror,” Peter had once said. “Every ride can kill you. You don’t get on unless you are prepared to die, and Molly and Sissy aren’t ready to be separated from each other yet.” He took a long pause, staring at his hands. “They have something the rest of us don’t. We all lost family when the horde came. We all ran. Hell, I think you’re the only one of us who’s actually from Cheney.”
“’Cause you don’t talk about it,” I finished.
“Because we don’t ask,” he corrected. “Someday, if we live through this, we’ll tell the stories of our lives before the world died. For now,” he leaned forward and made sure I could see my reflection in his pupils, and said, “We focus on living and the life we want, not death and the life we lost.”
Looking into his eyes, I thought, When I’m with Sissy, I have the life I want.
God. Is it wrong that even in this post outbreak world, finding a girl is still my primary instinct? Or is it just taking initiative? Not a lot of girls running around right now, at least ones that don’t want to pin you down and consume you, that is.
And she’s perfect.
And she likes me.
She may be my only chance.
It’s the joke of fate that the group I become established with has someone that I find so attractive it distracts me from all else. And apparently, I’m not very sneaky with my feelings.
“Kid,” Peter summoned me one day. I was in the break room of the mill, and Peter was sitting in what must have been the manager’s office when the facility was open. I got up from my conversation with Wood and Sissy, and plodded into the office with the swagger of a bad boy being called to the principal’s office. Wood mocked me and Sissy laughed. The sound of her voice was enough for me.
“Shut the door, please,” came the voice from the desk. I did so, and turned to face Peter. No one claimed ownership of any room in the mill, but we all instinctively assigned the office to Peter. He was the man
